Live in New York City? Tomorrow night, some friends (both old and new) and I are going to meet up in Union Square. We’re going to peacefully show show solidarity with women around the country. Don’t live in NYC? You can do this in your city or town, too. How?

The Vagina Blogs.

Write a blog, tumblr, comment, or other piece, preferably (but not required to be) 400-500 words long. Tag it as #VaginaBlogs, wherever you post it, and link back to this post so we can register a trackback link. Don’t have a vagina, but have a problem with this conversation not being over yet? WE WELCOME YOUR SUPPORT. Join us.

A Vagina Blog can be about your vagina. It can be about how you and your vagina feel about the continued national assault on our right to stop being asked whether No Means No. How do you feel about the national conversation? How do the women in your life feel about having to constantly repeat that No Means No? How do you feel about how, nationally, time and energy are consistently being wasted by people who really should have better things to worry about legislating? It can be funny, it can be personal, it can be serious. There are as many different kinds of #VaginaBlogs as there are women who have #vaginas and men who support our right to have ownership over them.

We will be in Union Square reading out people’s blogs, tweets and more for as long as can be sustained. Join us, either here or in your own city, by using the hashtag #VaginaBlogs and contributing your thoughts.

SIMPLE SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Write 400-500 words (it can be more or less, these are just suggestions) about Vaginagate and the national conversation on women’s reproductive rights.

2. Include the hashtag #VaginaBlogs.

3. Post it on your blog, tumblr, twitter or facebook. (If you don’t a safe place to post your entry, submit it in the comments below.)

4. Submit a link where we can find your post in the comments below.

THAT’S ALL IT TAKES.

Also, consider emailing your blog to the Michigan House Speaker: JamesBolger@house.mi.gov. You can find information on your own national representatives via http://www.opencongress.org/.

We’ll start reading in Union Square as soon as we gather.

Join us.

And if you don’t like reading or talking in public, come anyway. You don’t have to read, and your presence makes a difference.

Check back for updates, because we’re going to try to livestream our readings. If you’re in another city and you want to do something similar, please leave a comment with your location and a spot that works.

We’ll read until we can’t read anymore, whether we run out of material or the park closes or we’re all tired and some of us have to go back home to sleep before going to our jobs in the morning. We’ll read peacefully and we’ll read with love.

And maybe we’ll keep reading on Tuesday.

What actions are happening in your city? Link to this post in order to get a trackback link and spread the word. Check back here for updates. And as one commenter on Vagina Vagina Vagina put it: VAGINA HUGS!

UPDATE: 12:51pm: Just got off the phone with Eve Ensler’s team. While there won’t be a livestream of the event in MI, they are filming it and will post excerpts online after the fact. We are also changing the hash tag to #VaginaBlogs to respect Ms. Ensler’s copyright. I’ve changed everything but the URL to this post, because that had already been distributed. Please act respectfully.

During the phone call, Ensler’s team drew my attention to her piece OVER IT, written last year.

This line in particular stood out to me: “I am over people not understanding that rape is not a joke and I am over being told I don’t have a sense of humor, and women don’t have a sense of humor, when most women I know (and I know a lot) are reallyfucking funny. We just don’t think that uninvited penises up our anus, or our vagina is a laugh riot.”

If writing a Vagina Blog isn’t your thing, take inspiration from OVER IT. What are you over? What are you fed up with? Tag your entry #VaginaBlog and link back to it here.

UPDATE 6/19/2012:
Our gathering in Union Square was amazing; will update further soon. Till then, thank you to everyone who contributed, whether it was by showing up or posting in the comments below. We definitely plan to keep #VaginaBlogs alive, and may do further public readings, so please continue to reference, track back, comment, etc. back to this post. Hoping to be able to post some video in the next few days, provided Qik Vid worked.

Effing ridiculously awesome. I will put my brain to work as soon as I get a moment and hopefully find a way to be a part of this anyway possible (other than promoting the heck out of it!). Kudos to you, Rachel, KUDOS!

Hi Rachel – I don’t have a blog or tumblr to post this on, but I wanted to offer it anyway.
Thanks for fighting for the vaginas!

#VaginaBlog

I am usually not very generous with my vagina. It’s mine, after all, and I keep it on a rather close leash. I have loaned it out on occasion, only when I knew it would be well cared for, and only to someone who would consult a manual before trying to figure out how it worked on their own. And there was once, only once, that a special boy got an all-day, all-access pass, opening the gates just for him. It’s for him that I have concern for vaginas.
He doesn’t have one, this boy that once passed through mine, but that’s not the point. I want to raise a man who respects vaginas and all the wonderful women who house those vaginas. I talk about women. I teach about women. For a kid who lives and breathes trains, this can be a challenge. So, you better believe when a woman engineer retired from a local railroad, that picture was ripped out of the paper and plastered on his wall. Not every day you get exposed to a locomotive vagina. It is not an accident that his pediatrician, his dentist, and even his dog’s vet are all women. Women with what I imagine are very smart vaginas. I am drenching his world with talented, accomplished women to show him his future peers, colleagues, bosses and friends. I want there never to be a revelation of equality and equal-worthiness. I want that to be simply a given, just as the stove is hot and his popsicles are cold
Now, my son may never actually see a vagina. He may grow up, find a wonderful husband and live in vagina-free happiness forever. Or, he may have a different husband and adopt beautiful girls with Russian or Chinese vaginas. He may even have a wife and five daughters, and live in a world beset by vaginas It really doesn’t matter to me.
I want him happy.
I want him to be curious and respectful.
I want the women that may become his family to be safe and healthy. Because while I haven’t met them yet, and they may not even be born at this moment, those vaginas and the precious women who carry them will be my family. And I can’t wait to meet them.

He said “What’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine.” But I beg to differ.
At brunch this morning he slathered maple syrup all over pancakes we were supposed to share. “I like honey on my pancakes, dear.”
“Sorry”, he said before stuffing his face with my pancakes.
“What’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine.” He said as we took a walk through Central Park. I took out my phone to take a picture of a butterfly but he snatched it out of my hand and said , “My phone’s dead I need to call my friend to meet us later.” The butterfly flew away.
“Sorry”, he said before running up the minutes on my phone.
“What’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine.” He said as we dined with our friends. While we talked the night away he was sipping my wine. I asked for another glass but his wallet was empty.
“Sorry”, he said before drinking the last drop.
“What’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine.” He said as I slipped on my nightgown, he was rubbing my leg. “You can pout all you want but I’m going to bed. You can slather me with syrup, you can run your hands up my leg, but this vagina is mine and I am going to bed.”
He sat there in shock as I turned out the light.
“Sorry.” I said “What’s yours is yours and what’s mine is mine.”

#vaginablogs there are lots of difference places we can point the blame of how we have ended up in a place and time where other humans have such disregard for follow humans. But that really starts in the home. If you are a mother or a father, it is imperative to teach respect to your children. Especially when it comes to women. Women need to respect other women as well as men respecting women. If we bring each other down, the GOP will just ride that wave as far as they can take it because they love nothing more. Something like the word “vagina” isn’t something needs to be debated because it is a medically correct term. Maybe it’s not the prettiest word (once again a man or a group of men came up with this word) but it is what it is so grow up and deal. If you can’t deal with the word because you can’t deal with a woman making choices for herself, you really need to look inside yourself and comes to terms with it. It is the only way we as humans can continue in this world. Thank you.

Thanks so much everyone for spreading the word about what’s happening here in Michigan. The performance yesterday was amazing! As was the attendance. More than 4000 protestors. Check out Eve Ensler’s intro speech and some of the hundreds of signs from the protest:

And please promote this video far and wide to your networks, it’s part of our effort to keep folks pissed off, engaged and educated about the republican war on women, in Michigan and nationwide. Thanks!

We were encouraged to submit our post to this great project: Becoming a Woman, in which the newest member of our blogging team shares her experience as a trans woman, connecting her relationship to the concept of the “vagina” to the recent controversy over the use of the word in Michigan.